Article Index

My first car was a 1975 Plymouth Valiant; it had enough room for eight teenage boys to sit in and not have to touch each other. Under the hood it had enough room to sit on the wheel well, prop my feet on the tie rod and do almost anything I might need to do to the engine. I could strip that engine to pieces and put it back together with new seals in a weekend. In drastic contrast, my car today barely seems to have enough room to reach an arm in under the hood. I would be lucky if I could even change the oil on my car.

That seems to be the way of things. Machines and tech keep getting smaller and smaller, all the while growing in power and efficiency. When it comes to power house computers, for a while it was going the way of the American hotrod, bigger, faster, and hotter. Thankfully, enthusiasts and gamers can get the power they require for the latest games and utilities in a much smaller package. Midsize computer cases are beginning to incorporate all the amenities of the largest, most expensive cases on the market.

The Cooler Master's N600 (NSE-600-KKN1) is a mid-tower gaming case. The Cooler Master N600 boasts three 5.25" drive bays, and seven 3.5" internal drives alongside five 2.5" bays. That is a lot of drive space for a smaller case. The total case size is 8.1 * 17.9 * 18.9 inches (W/H/D). When a case that size is also able to equip a graphics card a full 16.9 inches long, you know it was made with high end gaming in mind. Of course, Cooler Master being the masters of "cool", it is a great looking case that also provides an enormous amount of airflow, including the fairly unique right side fan mount (fan not included). There is a 120mm fan in the front of the case as intake, which pushes airflow across the drive bays, and there is an additional slot for either another fan or a 120mm radiator/fan combo for water cooling. The width of the N600 allows for a 6.6 inch CPU cooler to be used, which is perfect for something like the CM Hyper 212 EVO @ 6.3 inches.